@DavidWallace None that have any political meaning, no.

We abolished that a century or so ago.

So when I vote for a particular candidate, I am expecting that that candidate will transfer my vote to someone else of his/her choosing?

During elections, the candidate has no choice but to give his excess votes to the list.

And there is also a certain threshold below the "kiesdrempel" ("elective number": number of votes divided by number of seats) that guarantees a seat if you're too low on the list. Otherwise the party list determines who goes first, even if someone low on the list got a much larger number of votes than people high on the list.

So how do I know who my representative is?

You don't have one.

All of parliament represents the entire population.

Once elected, an MP is supposed to vote based on his own convictions, in theory.

Hmm. I wish I didn't have one.

Haha why?

thecivilian.co.nz/labour-proposes-ban-on-trevor-mallard

I'm afraid I do not understand what this is a parody of.

nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10472204

Would you want to be represented in parliament by someone who punches other members of parliament?

Preferably not.

Unless it was a one-time incident and he is otherwise a good MP?

Which I suspect he isn't...

He's kind of a big, stupid thug.

Heh.

Then, no.

When it comes to voting for my local representative, I always pick whichever candidate I think is most likely to come second to Trevor.

Heh.

But, in a proprtional system, would he not also end up in parliament?

Probably.

Then we cannot save you.

Nothing can save us

No?

Then what will happen?

dunno

I smell weed.

People smoking underneath my window.

Is it not legal in Holland?

It is.

And in Sweden?

Not legal but meh I think

Dunno if one can be punished for smoking

OK.

but I'm no expert

Neither am I.

How are your mosquitos?

I hear there is a lot in the mountains this summer, not much here by the coast.

I read that, in cold regions, they are active only for a short period, but, during that period, they come out in excessive numbers.

The pic I spammed was from 2010 I think

OK.

I had some large ants in my house today.

I wonder where they came from.

Smoke drives away mosquitos.

Smoke is its own punishment.

And ventilation.

The older I get, the less I am bothered by their bites.

Is that normal?

@tchrist I read somewhere that it is a myth, my experience is also that it is only temporary (while standing in the smoke)

Probably.

You also need permanent ventilation.

@Cerberus I get less and less bothered during summer, almost allergic reaction in the beginning but less and less as I'm exposed to them.

Hmm.

For some people, it gets worse as they get bitten more.

Don't think I heard that before

but guess it can make sense if it is allergy

Like wasp stings.

If you're allergic, the first time will be less bad than the second time, a "warning".

And I smell more weed.

Are you allergic to pot?

I am. It’s related to ragweed, and I’m allergic to ragweed.

Actual mosquito allergies are kind of rare, but some people do have worse reactions than others.

@Cerberus I don’t know. They seem to like to bite younger people around me a lot more than they seem to like to bite me. So maybe you should keep a few on hand just in case as decoys.

Alternately, it may be that I just don’t notice the bites as much any more.

But I don’t think so. I got one last night.

And I certainly noticed it.

It didn’t swell up superhuge or anything, but it itched enough to annoy me.

It was hard to stop itching, but that just makes it worse.

Damn it, now you got me thinking about it.

I smell a plot.

sing something and record it for distraction?

lalala I can’t hear you.

> In 2011, 12,300 children nationwide got ER treatment for TV-related injuries, compared with 5,455 in 1990. The injury rate nearly doubled, from 0.85 injuries per 10,000 children aged 17 and younger in 1990 to 1.66 per 10,000 in 2011, the study found.

This is what happens with increasingly giant TVs: we pancake our kids.

oh, getting Cerb late here, did not notice, should get some sleep. nite

ninite

TV-related injuries?

Mosquito bites just don't seem to itch as much as they used to, I don't know.

Ugh, I saw this kid pissing against the café opposite my window.

Isn’t that illegal?

Plus if they catch him, he’ll have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

Yes, it is illegal.

And we have no such thing as a registry for sex offenders.

And pissing is not sex.

@tchrist And! I see light.

This was at 3 AM:

And this is now, 4:30:

See?

I bet it's nautical dawn or something.

I also hear the first birds.

Twittering their tweets.

Again, it looks significantly lighter to the real eye.

Do people distinguish between highly developed and just developed countries?

Or there is no such idea exist

It exists if you want it to.

Everything is gradual.

4:42. You see how fast it happens?

is it your apartment?

A picture taken from my window, yes.

sick, can I visit later? let's pajama party

Haha, sure!

Ring the doorbell thrice so I will know it is you.

What does "is it gay to experiment?" mean?

Perhaps they mean to experiment sexually with members of the same sex?

Italy must get out of G8 and Korea must be a G8 member =D. What do you think?

Why?

Italy's GDP is twice that of Korea...

I think we have almost same GDP

Why did you think I said it was twice that of Korea?

Because I looked at a list.

The difference is less if you correct for PPP.

@Cerberus true. But exposing yourself in order to piss is indecent.

Well, nothing is visible unless stand very close and also against the wall.

Besides, indecency is not sex.

It isn't.

It is littering rather than a sexual offence.

The idea, though, is that a little kid could see you.

And then what?

The kid could see your junk.

That is nearly impossible, especially at night. But what if a kid saw that?

The kid could think pissing in public is acceptable, and whip it out at McDonald's.

Hehe.

Nice image.

Y'know, store it away for later.

Thanks.

Great.

It is at least potentially indecent, sure.

Yeah.

Maybe not in Cerbland.

Sir Bland.

But one normally does it in such a way that it is very hard for anybody to see anything, especially not unintentionally.

So the main problem is not indecency, but littering.

Shrug. I thought only drunk and homeless and drunk homeless pissed in public.

If he did it into a canal, I wouldn't mind so much.

They don't care about much.

eew.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Yes, sort of.

I'm not trying to defend the indecency of it.

The canals are big and they stream all the time. Pissing won't increase the level of pollution significantly.

I mean, unless everybody did it all the time.

You know, it was not long ago when some houses still used the canals as sewers.

Guys, I went to a movie with a friend and he said he was able to understand everything what actors said in English. After the movie, we went to a restaurant together and I asked him if he could understand a background music that was playing, but he couldn't understand it at all.

Why do you think this happened?

Before the 19th century, all the houses used the canals as sewers. They stunk, at least some of the time.

@O0oO0oOO0ooO Music is much harder to understand.

1.) There are other sounds obscuring the voice, the instruments.

2.) There are other noises in a restaurant.

hmm right

3.) Songs use poetic language, which is not mainly structured to be easily understood, but rather to achieve an artistic impression.

I'm sure there are Korean songs where you can't hear all the words.

True that, only some rap musics

Here's a lullaby. Good night.

@Cerberus A cafe isn't the most well thought out choice, now is it?

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 That was cool. I enjoyed that.

Yes, it is a rather insolent place. It was closed.

Awkwardness

Hi @Cerberus

Let sleeping dogs lie. I'd say "at". Unless, of course, I meant "on".

@Sudhir are you preparing for an ESL exam?

Hello.

Yes, I am about to step into my basket.

@Cerberus I just stepped out

@JohanLarsson You two share a basket?

no, not yet

I can't believe you can only find this in Korea

what is it?

@JohanLarsson Haha, you have to take these things slowly!

I call it "Cup popcorn chicken", so on a top of cup, you have popcorn chickens and at the bottom you have Cola

So you only have one cup to carry. Ingenious.

yeah

haha

it looks like this

actual name is "col-pop"

should perhaps be cal-pop

@O0oO0oOO0ooO The three things Cerberus said. But the biggest factor is probably that distinguishing vowels relies on identifying the formant frequencies in each syllable, and these will be obscured by the harmonics of the note to which the syllable is sung. So even without the competing sounds and the poetic language, words will always be harder to understand when they're sung than when they're spoken.

@Mitch: Hi, is the following sentence grammatical?

> [you are] The smartest child one could possibly have had

Looks ok to me but that does not mean much as i don't know much English

Thanks.

It sounds weird to my ears

it sounds a bit weird, make sure to get an opinion from a native speaker

Will do, thanks.

@Gigili strictly correct: 'you were ... have had' or 'you are ... have'. Butbin normal speech yours would pass. They all sound a little off because of the desire to try to make it grammatical makes one doubt (even for me a native speaker).

@Mitch I'd go with the latter, unless the birth and childhood are the specific topics.

@Mitch Thank you. So the smartest child one could ever have had is incorrect, right?

@Gigili No, not incorrect at all.

What is a cleaner way to rewrite it? I thought about it for a while then an unexpected nap happened

It's clean enough if that's how you want to say it.

@Robusto But it's not in the above list, you were [...] have had and you are [...] had

If you want to be less formal, "You're the smartest child possible" or "You're the smartest child I [we] could have had" and so on.

Uhum, got it. Thank you @Rob.

It's the pronoun "one" that makes it sound formal.

Some people actually talk like that, though. It's a fine line.

Just to make sure, the smartest child one could possibly have had is also fine, right?

@RegDwighт Three things I don't need to see news stories (or LEGO models) about, in order: the Kardashians, the royal brat (or any drooling crap about the royals at all), and the pope.

@Gigili Yes.

Thanks again.

De nada.

I will say the LEGO Pope Francis is kinda funny though:

@Robusto noted. How about this, then?

waits

Okay okay, have a Godot.

@Robusto Oh no! He's wearing the One Ring! We're doomed! If only Isildur had thrown it into the Fire!

@RegDwighт "... then hell itself"?

I recently bought my first LEGO set that has The One Ring. Funnily enough, it has two of The One Ring. I guess that's because they have seen the movies and know all about Faramir.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Too late. Somebody wake up Frodo and get him some coffee.

@Robusto yes, that's what it says.

Who neads speling?

Aaron.

Paul.

@RegDwighт One neat thing about the Ring piece: it's essentially a plate with a stud-hole on both sides.

But it's too narrow to accomodate two studs.

I bet if you used enough of them you could make it work well enough

anyway I have two one-ring pieces too. I think Lego includes a spare because it's an important piece that is likely to be lost. And also as a joke.

Perhaps. But "if you used enough of them" implies you have plenty of space, in which case there are other techniques.

yeah

oh, I also got two Stings in my Weathertop set. So two rings, two stings.

And two fields of gold?

I know that the rings are weapons of war.

But that's not the shape of my tart.

Anyway, from what I hear Weathertop is the only complete set in the entire LOTR lineup.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Two stings by two different insects or what?

@Gigili Sting is the name of a sword from the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings books.

Two bee stings?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Umm, right. And MRS is the name of a bot that doesn't get my jokes.

@Robusto wow that's depressing.

What a tiny sword. What's the use?

@DavidWallace Maybe that's where the rule came from.

@Gigili It's made out of Lego. It's the thought that counts.

@Gigili for cutting tiny Orcs

Tiny Orcs are of no use themselves.

They are very useful to tiny Dark Lords

@Gigili As Rob said, no, not incorrect, that is, could be correct, depending on context. If you're talking about the present, then use the 'have'. If about the past (like the birth, or raising the child, then 'have had'. If you're talking to the child now and praising them for how well behaved they are now, then 'have'. If trying to say to the child how they used to be so great then 'have had'.

@Mitch Noted. Thank you for your explanation.

@Robusto wait. you don't want to see a lego model of the Karsashians? That would be a monumental acheivement.

Who care about tiny Dark Lords to invent something to cut tiny Orcs... They don't occupy too much space.

Anyway, I think I'm done for today.

By.

Hi

@Mitch That seems like a duchy explanation.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 This doesn't look like a real one.

@Noah define "real"

I assure you that is a photograph of a real object

@Gigili just for more context it was made by Elves not Dark Lords

@Mitch Must be, since I couldn't locate one on Google search. @RegDwighт: job opportunity.

Commutez.

Soemthing that could slit the Undertaker's throat.

Who is the Undertaker?

And what the hell is a 'duchy' explanation?

The Undertaker is the guy from the WWC. Duchy is self explanatory.

@Gigili They can occupy lots of space if you buy enough of them

@Noah so, a self-explanatory explanation?

Now that explains it.

Does anybody know how to send a movie from a Mac into an iPhone?

sorry, I'm a Windows/Linux/Android user. I don't condone Macs or iPhones.

There's one thing that I hate about the iPhone. No file system. Don't we really, really need that.

I just can't wrap my head around their stupidity in this regard. I hate iTunes.

And by the way, I accidentally deleted all my mp3 files.

The hell with you Mr. Jobs.

@Noah iTunes is one of the major reasons why I don't want an iPhone. Or iPod.

Hell, I have an iPod and I refuse to install iTunes on my pc, instead I use Linux tools for it which don't work 100% but it's better to deal with the hassle of those tools than to have iTunes on my computer.

And I also uninstalled Safari, which I used to use for testing, and Quicktime, because Apple insisted on trying to make me install iTunes whenever one of those other programs had an update.

I think you are right.

I am on Mac, so that doesn't bother me. iTunes comes preinstalled with it. I have to use it. I am thinking of jailbreaking my iPhone, but I have recently upgraded to i0S7, which is not supported by the jailbreaking community

So for now everything seems like a dead end, plus I have a flight to catch in 5 hours, so I have to have something on my iPhone to keep me busy while flying.

For which I downloaded a movie and wanted to transfer it to my iPhone and it looks like I have to download an app for it.

God, why do they make everything so complicated.

And the software seems to be taking for ever to convert something

@Noah no Avril Lavigne in this chat.

@Robusto what is job?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I will start building my Orthanc today. Yes, today. Was going to begin construction yesterday, but somehow didn't make it to the cellar.

I'm so excited, I just can't hide it.

@RegDwighт sweet

I had a tough decision to make the other day in the store, between a train, and orthanc, and the haunted mansion.

I think I will try to get the others at christmas.

Does anyone know how to copy a movie file into an iPhone without iTunes?

@RegDwighт orþanc: OE cunning mind; original, inborn thought; a skilful contrivance or work, artifice, device, design; cunning or skilful;

@Noah simplehelp.net/2007/07/08/…

Just use scp.

:)

Use a particle accelerator to flip the individual bits in the storage

That would cost more than scp.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 you might need to hurry up with the mansion. I snatched one for my birthday in our LEGO Store last month, and they only had like three more on the shelves, and the guy right behind be picked up one of them, and now they have zilch.

The whole Monster Fighters theme was pretty much tied to last Halloween anyway.

(Oh, and did I mention that the Haunted House is freaking awesome?)

Now, Orthanc, on the other hand, will be around for easily another year.

Likely more, what with the movies still coming out.

@RegDwighт Yeah. Well... I have to prioritize. as much as I'd love to buy every set that comes out, I have other expenses to cover too.

Maybe I'll prioritize the mansion for Christmas.

I know. My next month's budget is pretty much spent already.

They'll be bringing out the 41999 co-creation model, at last, and the green Technic truck, oh and then there's the fugly DeLorean of which it appears I now have to get two.

They got wind of the typo. Imagine that.

And I need to remember to start saving for the Sydney Opera House. Sigh.

Okay- No luck

It looks like the iPhone was designed by communists.

Communism and capitalism exist on a circular continuum: go too far in one direction you wind up in the other persuasion.

@Noah It was designed by a dictator.

@Robusto that's not the sad part, the sad part is that there is nothing else on that continuum. Like, there could be Freecakeandhookersism in-between, but no.

Or at the very least a Go where you get to collect $200.

@RegDwighт What are those two hundred 1935 dollars worth in today’s money?

@tchrist nothing, because again, you don't get to collect them.

But the US Inflation Calculator sez, $3,408.82.

The real question, is, of course, how long you have to work for $3400 today as opposed for $200 in 1935.

Inflationdata.com gives $3186.48

Well at least they got the ballpark right. Less than 10% off.

The real question is, were you better off with $200 in 1935 than you are in 2013 with ~$3K?

Well, that's sort of what inflation is all about.

I am not sure which factors they include in the calculation in the US.

I mean, are unemployment rates the same? Percentage of people living below the poverty line? Etc.

In 1935 we didn't have the internet to easily look up inflation numbers, so my vote goes to today.

Also today I have Lego. In 1935 I didn't. QED.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I dunno, I'm pretty sure in 1935 you could've bought the entire Internet for $200.

The U.S. was in desperate economic straits all through the 1930s. It took a world war to kick-start the economy.

@RegDwighт And if I got my money's worth, I'd have had $200 in change too.

We could be headed for something as bad or worse. It's not clear at this point.

And some crazy programs after the war.

> In 2009, Hasbro released two mini games that can be played as stand-alone games or combined with the Monopoly game. In Get Out of Jail, the goal is to manipulate a spade under a jail cell in an attempt to flick out various colored prisoners.

Yeah, the war economy is what built American prosperity. But it was an artificial high, like meth. And for the rest of the 20th century, whenever we needed a boost, we used more of that "meth" fix to fix the economy.

Now that’s racist.

Even if the jails are full of spades and other colored prisoners.

The real problem is with the whole system we're using right now. It's all about growth. If your economy doesn't grow by X% every year, it's considered sick. Which of course is complete nonsense, but that's what we all settled for, and it's next to impossible to get out now that everyone uses it.

All around the merry-go-round, the monkey chased the weasel. . . .

And the real fun part is that we still use it even for countries with declining population.

Which soon enough is like every developed country ever.

The monkey thought it was all in fun. . . .

POP! goes the weasel.

That's not barbershop, @tchrist.

It’s about the economic nonsense.